There's No Such Thing As Monsters
Chapter Five
Mary Winchester was beautiful.
She sat in the chair across the table from Sam, having appeared there sometime between him looking around the room doubtfully and rubbing his eyes in some vague, fruitless attempt at getting rid of the headache that just wouldn't go away, and was beautiful.
Sam had only ever seen photographs and he hadn't realized until now that still-frame didn't do her justice, didn't capture everything that needed to be captured.
She was older than the photo's depicted her, of course, but there was no mistaking that it was her, her features softened with time but not faded. Her hair still golden, lighter than Dean's, with no hints of grey or fake shine of dye. She had laugh lines around her eyes, that crinkled deeper when she smiled, which she did when she realized she'd caught Sam's attention.
"Hello, Sam."
Sam could only stare, tongue-tied and bewildered, and his first thought was that for some reason he'd expected her to call him Sammy, before the rest of it sunk in.
A spell couldn't bring back the dead. Not as they were when they were alive, but Mary didn't look like she was about to try to eat him. He hadn't thought... Dean had said but Dean was bewitched, he couldn't possibly have been telling the truth.
Mary (the hallucination, something wearing her face, figment of his imagination... Mum?) didn't seem fazed by his silence. "I brought you some cookies," she said, pushing a plastic container across the table.
Sam lifted a hand and touched his fingers to the smooth surface. Real. Real real real, everything felt read, but it couldn't be real.
Could it?
"Mum?" he asked shakily, unable to stop himself.
"I know it's been a few days, but work's been hectic and I haven't had the chance..." she trailed off, smile fading as she drummed her knuckles on the tabletop in a nervous gesture Sam had always associated with Dean.
"It's okay," Sam said automatically. Anything to bring back that smile. He wanted to ask what her job was. He wanted to ask if she had come to his soccer matches, his high school graduation, if she helped with homework or baked or did any of the things he had imagined she would do while he was growing up. "I thought... I thought you were..."
"I know." Mary reached across the table and covered his hand with hers, soft and warm and there. Sam couldn't stop staring at it, trying to reconcile the conflicting messages his body and mind were sending him. Real, screamed one. It's a trick, his mind yelled back.
"I know, honey," Mary continued. "It's okay. It's not your fault. You're ill, but you're going to get better."
She looked so sincere, so reassuring.
"I'm... sick?" Sam said, asked. He didn't know what was real any more. Maybe Mary (Mum) was right. Maybe they were all right. Maybe he was sick. She was here. Was that proof enough?
He sat up straighter as a sudden thought occurred to him. "Is... is Jess? Is she...?"
Mary's face morphed into a sympathetic frown, her hand squeezing his. "Oh, no, honey. Jess died in a fire at your apartment, remember?"
Sam slumped, hope extinguished. "Yeah. I remember."
Mary gave his hand an extra tight squeeze. "I'm sorry, Sam."
Sam pushed it to the back of his mind, mentally apologizing to Jess as he did so but even after all this time, thinking about her sometimes made him feel like he was being torn in half, and he couldn't deal with that on top of everything else.
"What about Dad? Is he...?"
Mary's face took on the exact look that Dean got when he didn't approve of something. "Your father... struggles with this. He has a hard time understanding your illness." She sighed. "And he feels guilty. You both said some harsh things to each other before we realized you were sick."
"Oh."
Mary's smile appeared again, though it looked forced. "It's all going to be okay, Sam. As soon as you're well you can come home and everything will be okay."
Sam nodded dumbly. Maybe... could it be possible that his whole life had been a figment of his imagination? Suddenly, instead of books on monsters, he was craving books on schizophrenia. Was he looking for answers in the wrong place? Maybe medical texts could explain this better than anything in Bobby's library. Was Bobby even real? Or was he part of a delusion that Sam had created?
No.
No. This was wrong and Sam knew it. He couldn't have... it couldn't be... no, this wasn't real. He had to remember that. He couldn't get drawn into this fantasy, this spell or whatever it was. He had to think and find a way out.
But doubts were creeping in. It felt real. Mum felt real. He could smell her perfume. The people here felt real. The drugs affected him like they were real.
Sam had never heard of a spell this powerful, and how many creatures were there that could suck a person into a dream world? He wished that he could understand. He wished...
Wish.
"Sam?" Mary asked suddenly. It sounded as though it wasn't the first time she'd said something.
Sam jolted out of his musings, blinking.
"You're tired," Mary said kindly. She looked tired too. Strained. Sam supposed that visiting your crazy son in a mental ward was rather draining. "I should let you rest."
Sam nodded wordlessly, mind whirring over the possibilities. He pushed the thoughts back, just for a moment, as he stood with Mary and she stepped around the table, folding him into her arms.
She was smaller than Sam, and warm. He felt her breath against his collarbone as he let himself melt into the embrace. In that moment, Sam didn't care whether it was real or not. He wanted it to be real, more than he wanted to go back to his own reality. Mum was alive. Dad was alive. Dean was there, and there were no monsters coming to tear his family apart. No demons and their elusive master plans, or creatures to risk their lives for. Maybe it was real. No weapons or sigils or battle scars. A world without hunting or being afraid.
Then Mary pulled away, and Sam came back to his senses as the locked door closed behind her. This wasn't a perfect world. This was a prison.
XXX
Wish.
It could be the answer Sam had been looking for. Why hadn't he thought of it before? It hadn't been long since their last entanglement with a Djinn. If it hadn't been for the drugs they kept forcing on him (and did he read somewhere that medication for schizophrenia could cause psychosis in people without the illness? Not thinking about that) he could have solved this on the first day.
He couldn't remember hunting a Djinn this time around. He was sure it was a werewolf. Had he accidentally stumbled into a Djinn's lair while tracking the beast? Or was he missing a chunk of time? He wished his memories weren't quite so foggy. The harder he tried to make sense of them, the more confusing they got. He'd try to think of what he was doing before he got here, and instead of Dean he'd get a flash of an unfamiliar street, viewed as though he was sitting in a doorway. Or he'd try to remember details of a past hunt and get a glimpse of a watercolour painting. Weird...
Nothing made sense, except a Djinn. It had to be a Djinn, but...
What could he have wished for that would've landed him in a psychiatric unit? Dean had told him that his wish had been subconscious. He'd never voice it out loud. So, what? Sam subconsciously wished that he was locked up? That he was crazy? Wouldn't he rather that Jess were alive? Or Mum or Dad?
Sam stared sightlessly at the TV in front of him, thinking hard.
Maybe... maybe he wished for a world without monsters. Maybe...
Sam almost leapt out of his chair as a sudden sensation, like water dripping over him, crawled over his skin. He shuddered, hands automatically flying to his face, his hair, running over his clothes as he spun in his seat.
There was no one behind him. His clothes felt dry but the damp sensation remained, along with the smell of... vinegar? So strong he could taste it. And something like incense, hanging thick in air that had previously held only the generic scent of a hospital.
Sam turned back to the TV, letting out a shaky breath. He was imagining things. Must be imagining things. (He wished Dean was here to tell him that he wasn't crazy.) He had to think. Dean had wished that Mum was still alive and he'd retained his memories of monsters and hunting. SO if Sam wished that there was no such thing as monsters but still kept his memories, wouldn't it be logical that he'd ended up here?
Okay, so... from what little Sam had managed to get out of Dean, he knew that his brother had gotten himself out of his messed up reality by – the thought made Sam feel sick – stabbing himself. So Sam just had to...
No knives in a psychiatric unit. Of course not. The whole point of hospitals like this was to stop people from killing themselves. Great.
He'd think of something though. Winchesters were nothing if not resourceful.
Sam almost jumped again when Rosalie plunked down on the couch beside him (And ow, was it the meds that gave him this headache? It was always there, sometimes flaring up for brief periods before dying down to a background ache).
"I drew you a picture," she said, holding out a bit of paper.
"Thanks," Sam said distractedly, reaching out for it.
"I'm going to get out of here," Rosalie continued, "You're in my head so you're coming too."
"Is that right?" Sam mumbled, eyes roaming the room for anything that could prove useful.
Rosalie huffed impatiently. "Do you like my picture?"
"Oh, yeah, it's-" Sam stopped, his half-hearted glance turning into a full on stare.
It was disturbingly accurate. Black pen painstakingly filled in the space around the windows, depicted on an angle so one side and the front windscreen were visible, three thick tyres and a boot big enough to hide a body in, but it was the licence plate that really demanded his attention.
CNK80Q3. Dean had compromised by changing the plates when Sam pointed out that driving around in a classic car wasn't smart while hiding from the Feds.
He was looking at a drawing of the Impala.
Sam spun to face Rosalie, his grasp on the drawing crinkling the paper. "How did you draw this? How do you know this car?"
Rosalie recoiled slightly at his intensity. "You're in my head," she said uncertainly.
"Did you see it somewhere?" Sam waved the paper in Rosalie's face. "Through a window? Or... or somewhere else? Not here. Like, outside a warehouse or something? Did you go into a warehouse?"
"You're in my head," Rosalie repeated in a whisper, cringing back. "I don't know how to get you out."
"Okay." Sam took a deep breath, calculating this new development.
He looked Rosalie over with new eyes. Dark hair, same type of scrubs that he was wearing, wristband slipping down her arm proclaiming her Rosalie Jones, followed by her date of birth and what was probably her date of admission.
Dean said there had been a girl. A girl in his fake world that hadn't belonged. A girl who was actually strung up near him in the Djinn's lair. Sam shuddered at the sudden image in his head of him and Rosalie strung up the same way, the Djinn feeding off of them.
"Okay, listen." Sam leant in closer. He could fix this. "I think, I think this isn't real. It's, like... a dream. It's just... do you remember making a wish?"
"A wish?" Rosalie echoed, sounding bewildered.
"Yeah, like..." Sam trailed off, unable to think of a wish that could have brought this girl here. He shook his head. "Look, don't worry about the wish. I've figured this out and I know how to get out of here. And when I'm out, I'll get you out too, I promise. My brother and me, we'll help you."
Rosalie stared at him, eyebrows drawn doubtfully, and didn't answer.
XXX
Dinner at the psychiatric ward was served on tinfoil plates.
It was a silly mistake to make really, plastic would have been safer, but Sam wasn't about to point that out. It wasn't hard to slip one under his scrubs and smuggle it back to his room.
He had to time this right. The nurses checked the rooms every half hour after lights out. It was easier to think about this in steps, stages that he had to complete. Not thinking about what he was actually doing.
It was like preparing for a hunt. Focus, plan, get everything together as needed. Take a breath and don't be scared of what you're getting into.
Carefully, Sam bent the tin plate in half and smoothed out the bend, pressing it flat. He unfolded it and, in one smooth movement, ripped the plate in half along the crease.
Left with two halves, Sam discarded one and bent the remaining half again, repeating the process until he had a bit more than a quarter of a plate, complete with a sharp pointed edge.
Soft footsteps shuffled down the hallway. Hurriedly, Sam slipped the bits of plate under his bed and lay down, pulling the sheets up. He turned away from the door and it's little shade-covered window, eyes closed, listening.
The footsteps came to a stop outside his door. Sam held his breath. There was silence for what felt like an unreasonably long time, while Sam motionlessly panicked. What if they caught him? He'd never get another chance. Would Dean find him in time? And Rosalie. If he failed then she'd die too. Go away, go away...
The footsteps moved on, soft shoes squeaking against the linoleum floor. Sam let out his breath – and was that a small part of him that was disappointed? A tiny selfish part that cried out at the nurses failure to stop him. He didn't want to do this – tossing the covers back and reaching under the bed.
He held the shard of plate up in the muffled light and moved it to his wrist. He took a deep breath and tried to will his heart to stop it's attempt at beating out of his chest, as if it was trying to get in as many beats as it could before it stopped. (It wouldn't stop. Not really. He'd wake up in the real world and he'd be okay.) Gotta do it quick. He only had half an hour. Gotta do it now.
But the doubts were taking over. What if he was wrong? What if it wasn't a Djinn and his plan only ended in him being dead? What if he really was crazy? Schizophrenic like they said, and all this stuff about monsters was a delusion?
What if he was making a terrible mistake?
No. Rosalie drew that picture. She drew the Impala. It had to mean something. (But what if it didn't mean what he thought it did?) He had to be right.
He wished Dean were here.
There really was no time for second thoughts. He had to do this if he wanted to get back to Dean, if he wanted to save Rosalie, if he wanted to save himself.
Sam blew out a shuddering breath and steadied his hands. He pressed the blade down hard, and drew it along the thin blue vein that snaked up his wrist. Blood welled up and spilled over his skin, dripped onto the sheets at an alarming rate. Adrenaline crashed through his system.
The second wrist was sliced shakily, fingers and make-shift blade slick with blood.
There was a kind of shock-y disbelief at the sight of his wrists split open and streaming (and God, it felt real. What if it was real? It hurt like it was real and the blood was warm, so dark that it was almost purple and Jesus, shit, please don't let this be real).
He couldn't take it back now, couldn't change his mind and come up with a better plan. Sam lay back on the bed, breathing hard and panicked, and waited to wake up somewhere else.
TBC...